Fifteen Minutes of It

Ever since silly Andy Warhol, some artists (not this one) have assiduously sought their fifteen minutes of fame.  Instead of searching for that, however, they should seek fifteen minutes of drawing.  When fifteen minutes is all you’ve got, what the heck, go for it.  That’s what I did today.  I was at the National Gallery of Art.  A glance at my watch told me I had about twenty minutes until my parking meter expired.  That meant fifteen minutes to draw.  So I took it, drawing a detail from Paul Cezanne’s Peppermint Bottle.

After I got home I drew my blue compotier with the same urgency I had used in front of Cezanne’s picture.  It’s amazing how much you can extract from just fifteen minutes.

Give me fifteen minutes of drawing over fame any day.

Faces for drawing a day

I based this drawing on one from a “how to draw” book, changing it enough (I hope) that perhaps even the original artist would not recognize it.  My aim was to get back into the habit of drawing faces, also to do them quickly, and to use whatever means are lying around.  Perhaps I’ll get back into the habit of asking people to let me draw them — and overcome my shyness!  perhaps we can create an “a-day” motivator for that too!  — un-shy-thing-a-day that I did today — any takers?  Any reticient types out there ready to join me?

My thinking is that the more I’m able to compose a face quickly, perhaps I won’t even have to ask people.  Maybe I’ll just transform into a camera.   The second virtue in using other artists’ drawings and transforming them is that you gain experience in innovation.  You are using a thing, but changing the thing too.  And the use doesn’t really quite count (as innovation) unless you change it a lot.  And yet it doesn’t count as “copying” unless it’s reasonably faithful to the original.  (Jazz musicians will understand what I mean.)

Was also thinking I might find a husband for Renoir’s sweet looking young woman.  But neither of these will do.  One’s too old, the other’s way too serious.

Today’s Old Master Copy

When you’re busy raising hamsters, you’ve much less time for drawing fish.  Alas.  So, to while away the time not spent watching baby hamsters squirm, when I am not busy cooing  — and saying “oh, look!  how cute!”  — I do this.  Today’s copy after an old master is from Rubens’s famous painting of his second wife Helena.

Yep.  Left hand again.  If I keep this up, I’ll be afraid to draw with my right hand again!

My lament

I was telling a friend of mine last week, as we strolled through the National Gallery of Art, how much I missed my old friend Titian.   His painting Venus Blindfolding Cupid has been taken off regular view ever since somebody decided that it’s not a real Titian.  The theme is ironic.  Love, blind.  Well, I’d say that some of the Italian curators are have a little vision problem too.  It’s such an incredibly beautiful painting.  Interesting to compare with its counterpart in Italy.  (The image exists in a different version across the pond, probably one reason that the authenticity of the NGA picture is doubted.) 

Alas.  Well, thinking about it got me in motion.  I went digging around looking for a reproduction of the image so I could look at it.  And I made the quick drawing above.  Became quite captivated by the face — which is more ordered than the face of the Italian picture.  Quite possibly the NGA version might be painted by another artist — I’m not saying it’s not.  But it’s such a beautiful painting.  Can’t it be enjoyed simply for what it is?  For its own loveliness?

Loopy Lines

My kid wanted a drawing lesson today so I suggested she do what the old masters did when they were pups: copy.  Asked what she wanted to copy, she said she wanted to draw  ”an old renaissance picture with people in fancy clothes.”  So I gave her a catalog from the Met, and she ended up choosing Ingres’s fabulous portrait of the Princesse de Broglie. 

She had some questions afterwards about aspects of her drawing so to answer them I made a super-fast “copy” of my own, the above.   I’m glad I can teach my kid to draw because drawing becomes one more tool a person uses for thinking about things.  Whether one becomes an artist or not is irrelevant.  When you know how to draw, you see things in a new way.  Moreover, drawing is a useful skill.  You can design all manner of things once you know how to imitate the image you hold in your mind.

Only once did a teacher show me something in art by making a drawing of it herself.  That was my high school art teacher Karol Thompson.  In college and ever after, every question one asked was answered with talk. 

I have the utmost respect for anyone who will answer a question by picking up the pencil and “telling” in lines and shades.  My daughter’s question was very focused and my answer — my loopy answer — was equally quick and free.  And that’s the way I like it.

Having Fun

Regular readers of this blog know I like to make copies.  I also like to have fun.  A while back when I was drawing horses I made these two drawings which live on the same sheet thanks to the invention of construction tape (used to make a larger sheet by combining several sheets together).  I was copying horses from Japanese art.  Unfortunately I can’t remember who the artist is.  Hiroshige, Hokusai, someone else?  I dunno.  But here they are. 

My copies are definite interpretations.  Mine lack the rigor of the originals (boo woo) and also have a laisser-aller element that I attribute to the “fun” aspect.  If one were turning Japanese masterworks into kid cartoons, you might get a drawing somewhat a kin to these.

But, hey, sometimes an artist just wants to have fun.

Jan Lievens and Me in Color

I was browsing through the exhibition catalog of the National Gallery of Art’s Jan Lievens show today.  Made a quick drawing after the wonderful “tronie”  Man with a Beret.  I used colored pencils.  How I’ve changed.  I used to be such a snob.  I didn’t think that colored pencils were a “serious” medium.  Now I love them. 

I’ve grown.  Nowadays my attitude is, “if you can draw with it, how wonderful.”  I love drawing.  Whatever you can capture ideas with is a “serious” medium. 

Get your own copy of Lievens here.

When in Rome Do as the Romans Do

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  And copy all their statuary.  Alas, not having a ticket to Roma, I must content myself for now with Roman Portraits.  I’m still trying to figure out a way to draw these faces in something like the manner of Vincenzo Gemito.  (I’ll have to get back to you on that.)

Copying the Old Guys

This drawing is “after” Annibale Carracci (1560-1609).  Carracci, however, made his drawing in pen and ink.  Mine is conte crayon.  Sometimes it’s interesting to copy other artists — especially old dead masters who can’t come after you with accusations of copyright violation.  And sometimes it’s fun to really “copy,” trying to get every i dotted and t crossed as best one can manage.  I call that aspiring to Xerox machinedom.  Or you can alter the copy even as you copy by some method of deliberate interpretation.  So in this drawing I chose the conte as a meta-tool to imitate the ink wash drawings that Carracci also made in abundance. 

That’s a bit convoluted, so let me redo that:  I copied his pen and ink (line drawing) using a soft medium (conte crayon), but I used the conte in a manner to imitate (somewhat) Carracci’s ink and wash techniques (that he used in other drawings). 

That would make my copy officially a double whammy.  (Or a double header.  A double something ….)

My Diebenkorn, My “Berkeley”

Blogger June Malone posts a copy she made after an abstract Gerhard Richter watercolor, saying that she wasn’t sure she understood Richter’s abstraction, but that copying one taught her more about achieving depth and richness of color in the watercolor medium.

It inspired me to pull out my copy after Diebenkorn above.  The original, Berkeley #57, painted the year I was born,  lives at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  There’s a great many differences between my copy and Diebenkorn’s original painting which I’m aware of even though I’ve never seen the actual painting.  I’ve seen enough Diebenkorns to know that his oil painting’s surface is very textural whereas I kept the acrylic paint I used to make my copy fairly thin.  The scale of the paintings is radically different.  Diebenkorn’s painting is 58 3/4 inches square and mine (not truly a square) measures 18 x 24 inches.

However, like June, I found the practice of copying an abstract painting very intriguing.  My approach to copying Diebenkorn, not withstanding the paint, is rather more like a drawing in feeling.  I drew his lines and shapes, felt my way through the image’s forms, and ignored (of necessity) the layerings that I know exist in the original.  Also, my copy has a lot of “me” in it. 

Copying his painting was somewhat like taking a short walk with him in a Berkeley of imagination (I’ve never even been to California).  And while we walked, suffice to say we had a brief and pleasant chat. 

Diebenkorn’s painting is abstract, having no identifiable subject matter.  But it contains many feelings about natural forms, some of them landscape .  Equally it has many touchstones to early European and Euro-american painting: indebtedness to de Kooning, for instance, and through de Kooning more remotely to Picasso.  The SFMOMA site has some videos of Diebenkorn being interviewed and working.